Posted on: Thu 28-03-2024

The African Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation (APTF) and Nigeria’s National Institute for Pharmaceutical Research and Development (NIPRD) would work together to revolutionise the country’s pharmaceutical and vaccine manufacturing industry.

The decision was announced by the two organizations following a High-Level Dialogue on Technology Gaps in Nigeria’s Pharmaceutical and Vaccine Industry’ hosted in Abuja from 18-19 March.

According to a statement, the APTF would work with countries such as Nigeria to help them achieve Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) to ensure they meet World Health Organization standards, and to build local capacity and specific skills to strengthen domestic production of medicines.

Senior government officials and representatives of the private sector, development institutions, pharmaceutical manufacturers, researchers and other stakeholders from across Africa attended the meeting.

The African Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation is an independent agency established by the African Development Bank Group that promotes a strong and competitive pharmaceutical sector in Africa.

In his remarks, Nigeria’s Minister of State for Health, Tunji Alausa, welcomed the support of the African Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation, adding that efforts to address technology gaps in the health sector would enable the government to accelerate medicines delivery in the country.

“With the steps taken so far, I am confident that the government’s prioritization of local vaccine production will begin to yield the desired results in the shortest possible time and drastically reduce dependence on pharmaceutical imports,” Alausa added.

He added that the country has a national plan for the research, development, and local production of vaccines. The African pharmaceutical market is estimated to be worth over $47 billion, but the continent spends more than $14 billion annually importing medicines and vaccines.

Nigeria manufactures 25 per cent of its products and imports 75 per cent, while Africa imports 99 per cent of vaccines and 80-90 per cent of medicines.

The Chief Executive Officer, of APTF, Prof. Padmashree Sampath, explained that its partnership with NIPRD would remove barriers to domestic manufacturing and foster a healthcare value chain in Nigeria, adding that this in turn would drive innovation, competition, process and price transparency and access to an expanding range of high-quality life science and biomedical products.

Sampath said: “One of the things we could start thinking about in Nigeria, and we have talked to some people about this, is a joint Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (API) Industrial Park.”

She averred that India had just invested 800 billion rupees to build an API park to better compete with China on this front.

According to Sampath: “As an African regional agency, we work with every single country in Africa. We have all the international agencies that we work closely with, we have foreign companies and local companies that we work very closely with, and we have already been in contact with many either foreign companies or domestic companies or we already represent them. We are trying to see if we can make those partnerships happen.”

NIPRD’s Director General and CEO, Dr Obi Peter Adigwe, underscored the need for accelerated action to advance drug safety and sustainable local production of vaccines in Nigeria.

He hinted that NIPRD promotes the development and commercialization of phytomedicines, medicines, and biological products, including vaccines, from Nigeria’s indigenous natural resources.

“We may need to do some technographic mapping as a next step to engage stakeholders and policymakers. The three companies attending the meeting had expressed interest in starting vaccine production within the next 24 to 36 months,” Adigwe disclosed.

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